Supping With Panthers Page 5

  But a soldier cannot dwell on such maudlin thoughts for long. We were in deadly peril, that was true enough, but we would not escape it by sitting on our hands. I woke Cuff and Eliot, and once they had risen we continued on our way. For an hour we saw nothing worthy of comment. The path continued to flatten out, and the rocks began to give way to scrub. Soon we were walking through jungle again, and the vegetation overhead had grown so thick that not even the moonlight could penetrate it. ‘This is very strange,’ Eliot said, squatting down to inspect a vast flower. ‘There shouldn’t be flora of this kind at such an altitude.’

  I smiled faintly. ‘Don’t look so disturbed,’ I replied. ‘Would you rather we had nothing to conceal our approach?’

  And then, just as I said this, I saw the glimmer of something pale through the trees. I made my way up to it. It was a giant pillar, long shattered and overgrown now with creepers, but of a beautiful workmanship and decorated down the sides with a stone necklace of skulls.

  Eliot inspected it. “The sign of Kali,’ he whispered. I nodded. I drew out my gun.

  We went as stealthily as we could now. Very soon we began to pass more pillars, some flat on the ground and almost completely overgrown, others still massively erect. All had the same necklace-like decoration of skulls. The trees began to fall away and above the pillars I saw a lintel start to rise, bone-white beneath the darkness of the creepers and weeds. It was decorated in the florid Hindoo style, with the stonework twisting like the coils of a snake, and as I stared at one of the loops so it began to move, and I saw that it was indeed the body of a cobra, coiled and heavy, the guardian spirit of this death-like place. I watched it slip away into the darkness; then I walked forwards and began to feel marble under my feet; ahead, I could see the stone lit silver by the moon, and when at length I left the shadows of the trees I saw all around me great courtyards and walls, still standing despite the jungle’s tightening grip. Who had built this palace, I wondered – and who abandoned it? I was no expert, but it seemed to me that it was centuries old. I crossed the main courtyard. Columns stretched away from me in rows, and supported further columns on their roof. I guessed that they formed the palace’s heart.

  As I drew nearer to them I realised that they had been sculpted in the form of women – shameless and sensual, as so often seems to be the case, regrettably, with the ancient statuary of India. I will pass over their appearance, save to mention that they were quite naked and impossibly lewd. But it was their faces, oddly, which disturbed me the most. They had been carved with extraordinary skill, for they wore expressions of the utmost wickedness in which desire and delight seemed equally mixed. They were all facing the temple’s far end, as though staring at the giant statues I had glimpsed from outside. I hurried on past them. At length the columns came to an end, and I saw a small courtyard just in front of me. Giant figures loomed against the stars. I walked on, and as I did so I felt a stickiness underfoot. I kneeled down and thought I could smell the odour of blood. I touched the stones, then raised my fingers to the light of the moon. I had been right; my fingertips were indeed red!

  I walked forward to inspect the giant statues more closely. There were six of them arranged symmetrically on rising steps, three on either side. They were all women staring upwards, as the faces on the columns had been, at an empty throne. Just before this throne, the most damnable tiling of all, stood a further statue, of a little girl. I climbed towards it up the steps. They too, I realised, felt sticky underfoot.

  Eliot followed me. Suddenly, I heard him stop and I turned round. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Look,’ Eliot replied. ‘Do you recognise her?’ He was pointing at the nearest statue to us. Now that we had climbed the steps we could see her face, lit silver by the blazing moon. It was a coincidence, of course, for the temple was clearly centuries old, but I saw at once what Eliot had meant – the statue’s face was the very image of the woman we had captured, the beautiful prisoner who had subsequently escaped.

  I turned back to Eliot. ‘A great-great-grandmother, perhaps?’ I joked.

  But Eliot didn’t smile. His head was angled, as though he were trying to pick out some sound.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. For a couple of seconds, he didn’t reply.

  ‘You didn’t hear anything?’ he answered at length. I shook my head and Eliot shrugged. ‘It must have been the wind,’ he said. He smiled faintly. ‘Or the beating of my heart, perhaps.’

  I took a step forward to climb to the empty throne and Eliot promptly froze again. ‘There,’ he said, ‘can you hear it now?’ I listened, and this time I realised I could indeed hear something faint. It sounded like drums -not as we have them in the West but rather the tabla with its hypnotic, limitless beat. It was coming from beyond the empty throne. I crept up towards it; I put my hand on its arm and, as I did so, I felt a shudder of overwhelming dread so physical that I almost staggered back. Looking down, I realised that the throne was absolutely drenched in gore, not just blood but bones and intestines, and lumps of flesh.

  ‘Goat?’ I asked, looking at Eliot. He bent down and looked at what appeared to be a heart. His face froze as slowly he shook his head.

  The tabla beat was clear now and picking up in pace. Beyond the throne was a crumbling wall; I approached it and, kneeling down, peered through a gap in the masonry. I gasped at what I saw. For I was staring at the ruins of a mighty town, overgrown – as the palace had been – by creepers and trees, and yet filled, it seemed, with inhabitants. They were shuffling and stumbling away from us, past the cracked arches and pillars of the town, towards some gathering which lay beyond our sight behind a further wall. In the distance I could see the haze of flames, and I wondered what their significance could be, for I remembered that the disease-afflicted creatures had a great horror of light. The whole scene was dominated by a colossal temple, the same tower I had glimpsed through the jungle earlier, and I could see even at a distance how its exterior was a mass of statuary, for it was silhouetted against the stars and its base was lit orange by the blaze of the flames.

  I saw that Eliot was testing the wind. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘the breeze will be against us.’

  ‘Beg pardon, sir?’ asked the Sergeant-Major.

  ‘I mean,’ explained Eliot, ‘that they shouldn’t be able to catch our scent. You have seen how they sometimes pause to smell the air.’ He stared at both of us. All reluctance, all self-restraint seemed gone from his face now, and his eyes burned with the keenness of the seeker after truth. He turned and stared out at the looming form of the tower. The hunt is on, my friends,’ he announced. ‘Let us go, and see what we can find.’

  On we crept, then, for perhaps a quarter of a mile. Occasionally we would see figures shuffling below us, but we kept well hidden and we were neither spotted nor smelled. The tower was looming impressively now and we began to hear other instruments over the drums -sitars and flutes, wailing like the ghosts of the ruined town. The drum beats too were quickening, as though rising to some climax that we couldn’t glimpse, for the great wall continued to block out our view and I grew more and more eager to see what lay beyond. As the pace of the tabla increased, so we began to move faster ourselves until at last we were running across open ground. The ruins had fallen away now and there were fewer creepers and trees, so that we were, to all intents and purposes, almost wholly exposed. Once I thought we had been seen, for a group of hillsmen, shuffling like the rest, turned and I could make out the glint in their eyes; their stare, however, remained dead, and it was clear they had failed to make us out; we waited until they had moved on, and then we scrambled on towards the wall ourselves. It must once have formed the rampart of the ruined town; it was a mighty structure still, if a little broken-down, and it was with some effort that we clambered up its side. At length, however, we reached the top, as the beat of the tabla grew ever more fierce and the sitar’s wail seemed to rise up to the stars. We heard a great cry from a multitude of voices, somewhere between a cheer and a
sob, and then, following it, a grinding, creaking sound. I crept forward and pressed my eye to a gap in the wall.

  I crouched there in silence. Stretching away from the wall on which I stood, upwards of a hundred people were gathered – silent and utterly motionless. Their backs were turned to me, and they stood facing what seemed to be a wall of fire. The flames rose fitfully from a crack in the rock and a single bridge, narrow but ornately carved, arched high above their reach. From the bridge, a path then snaked up a steepish cliff towards the temple. This seemed built up from the very rock and loomed ghastly and massive over all of us. The riot of its statuary was more distinct now and had been painted, I saw, in black and violent shades of red. For some reason the very sight of it dampened my spirits, and as I stared at its summit I felt my heart begin to quail.

  A particularly vivid spurt of flame writhed up from the abyss, and against the orange of the fire I could make out a hellish form. It was a statue of Kali. Her face was beautifully, and therefore all the more grim, for it was suffused with an incredible cruelty so vivid that I almost thought the statue to be real, and not only real but staring at me. Everyone in the crowd, I realised, was gazing at it, and I too studied it, trying to fathom what secret it held thus to capture and besot such a multitude. It had four arms, two raised up high with hooks in their grip, and two below, holding in each one what appeared to be an empty bowl. The feet, I saw, were attached to a metal base, and the base in turn to a mass of cogs and wheels. I heard a cracking sound; the statue began to move; and I saw that it was the machine which was serving to turn it round. The crowd moaned – and a devilish noise it was, for it seemed to speak of anticipation and greed. At that same moment, I felt Eliot tap me on the back.

  ‘Unless I’m much mistaken…’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’

  He pointed. ‘Isn’t that Private Compton over there?’

  I looked. At first I couldn’t understand what Eliot was talking about, for I could see only a group of savages, their faces frozen and dead, their clothes tattered and streaked with blood. Then my heart leapt up into my mouth. ‘Good Lord,’ I whispered. I stared at the man who had once been my soldier, gore-stained and dead-eyed as he was. ‘But look here, Eliot,’ I said, feeling utterly appalled, ‘is there nothing we can do for him at all?’

  Eliot stared at me, his bright, keen eyes betraying the depth of his despair. ‘I am sorry, Captain.’ He paused. ‘There is nothing, certainly, that I can do as yet. This disease seems more deadly than I had ever dared to imagine…’ His face was darkened by a sudden look of stem warning. ‘You must put him from your mind, Captain – he is not your soldier any more. Do not even approach him – for I suspect that a bite, even a scratch, may prove fatal.’

  I glanced back at Compton. It was perfectly true there was nothing there; nothing; he might almost have been dead. And then, no sooner had I thought that, than I watched him start to change. It was no improvement for the better, however, for his face began to twist and his teeth to gnash, and his expression grew into one of imbecile savagery. He began to moan, as the whole crowd was moaning by now, and I wondered what this might possibly mean or portend. The music was reaching a most frenzied pitch and the crowd seemed roused to a fever of its own. Then, piercing even the general din, there came a scream of a kind I hope never to hear again, for it reached deep into my blood and chilled my very soul. The crowd fell silent, but hunger, I could see, was burning deep in their eyes. Again the scream rent the night; it was nearer to us now. Slowly the crowds began to fall away. The rhythm of the tabla beat faster, and yet more fast.

  From the darkness a procession was making its way, a line of wretches tethered one to the other by neck chains and ropes. Two men led it, both in Russian uniforms, but their faces were as dead as those of Compton, and one had bullet wounds across his stomach; I recognised him as a soldier we had downed by the Kalibari Pass and left for dead. Yet now here he was again, and leading a chain-gang of those who must once have been his comrades-in-arms. For one of the prisoners was yelling in Russian; he screamed at his guards, and I realised that it was he who had been screaming before; now though, if anything, his despair seemed even more profound and I wondered what it was that could inspire such dread. The guard cuffed him across the face; the wretched man sobbed and fell silent; and a stillness settled over the whole ghastly scene. The procession had halted now, next to the statue of Kali. I inspected the row of prisoners. There were other Russians, and hill-folk too – men, women, even a child of seven or eight.

  ‘Sir,’ whispered the Sergeant-Major. ‘The very rear!’

  I looked, then I swore beneath my breath, for I could make out the soldiers I had left to guard the Kalibari Pass. They were tied together like cattle by the neck. One of them glanced at Compton, but no trace of recognition crossed Compton’s face in return, and there was nothing to be distinguished there but degeneracy and greed.

  Suddenly, a woman’s voice seemed to whisper from deep within my mind. It was the damnedest thing; I am half-tempted now to think that I imagined it all, but Eliot and Cuff both claimed later that they had heard the voice as well, chanting as I heard it chant, and speaking with the same melodious tone. What was it? How had it happened, that we should all experience the very same thing? I do not readily stick my neck out, but any old India hand, if he is honest, will admit that once or twice he has experienced things he couldn’t understand, and I believe that our hearing this voice was just such a thing. I like to think of myself as a level-headed chap; and the reader, I trust, will not lightly mark me down as a charlatan or crank. However – dread word! – I believe that what we heard was a mind-reader’s voice, a mind-reader furthermore of the utmost skill and power, for her chant was as lovely as any sound I have heard, and I found that I was rooted like a tree to the spot. I remember thinking vaguely that we should head off pretty sharpish, for I had this nervous feeling that the voice had discovered us, and I was afraid that our place of hiding was revealed; Eliot too, I know – from speaking to him later – felt exactly the same. But I couldn’t move -nor could Eliot – nor could Cuff.

  I closed my eyes, and a woman’s face seemed to fill my thoughts; she was dark-eyed and lovely, with a necklace made from drops of the finest gold. She was the woman who had been our prisoner and escaped -and yet, in a strange way, she was also the goddess whose statue we had seen. Don’t ask me how I knew this; I just had a sense of it, and pretty soon I was prickling with the most ghastly feelings of animal lust. And all the time, as these feelings were building up and I was attempting to cool them down, so this hellish woman was chanting; it was her voice I had been listening to, I realised now, and I wasn’t surprised, for the chant was as lovely and unnerving as her face. Suddenly I recognised a word she sang interspersed among all the rest: ‘Kali.’ Faster and faster the chant rose, and the sitars with it, and the beat of the drums. My eardrums ached and seemed fit to burst. One last sound filled my brain, and I felt a shiver of terror and delight pass through my blood. ‘Kali!’ The music peaked on the final syllable, peaked and fell away. Then there was silence. I pressed my ears. I opened my eyes.

  The Russian prisoner had been untethered. He was being dragged towards the statue of Kali, and once there he was lifted like an offering before the goddess’s face. Meanwhile, one of the other guards was lowering the statue’s upper arms; these were not fixed, I saw now, but could be cranked up or down and then positioned at will. I saw the guard polish the gleaming steel hook … and I suddenly understood what was happening, the fidl repulsive magnitude of it. I wanted to turn away but I could not, for it was as though the voice were still chanting its honeyed poison through my soul. And so I stayed where I was – stayed frozen, and watched. The Russian’s hands were bound fast together and his wrists placed over the point of the hook. The guard pressed them down; the Russian screamed and then screamed again as the guard moved his wrists up the curve of the hook, greasing the metal with the poor wretch’s blood. He was left there, sobbing and whimpering,
as a second prisoner – a young native girl – was brought forward by the guards. The same hellish routine was repeated with her, and then the guards cranked up the goddess’s arms so that the victims were left hanging like carcasses of meat. The poor girl moaned and tried to stir, but the pain of the steel in her wrists was too great, and she slumped with the agony and hung motionless again. Behind her the orange flames writhed and twisted up into the night, but she and the Russian and the statue were still, a dark silhouette of unparalleled horror.*

  Then I heard the machinery start to grind and creak. The goddess turned. As it did so, the Russian and the native girl writhed and screamed, for the jolting that was sent through their wrists must have been well-nigh unbearable. The statue shuddered and came to a halt and a low moan of disappointment went up from the crowd. My knuckles whitened as I clenched my pistol. How I longed then for a gatling or a Maxim! But I was helpless, and there was nothing I could do but lie there and watch. The sitar, I realised, was droning again now, and its notes hung heavy in the air like the mood of dread. The statue jolted suddenly; as it did so, the sitar was joined by the drums, and as the statue began to move round and round so the pace of the tabla increased in time. The victims hanging from their hooks were twisting uncontrollably now; their screams were terrible to hear as the pace of the statue’s revolutions began to lift them up into the air, for all the world like some grisly fairground ride. There was a stirring from the crowd: everyone pressed forward and then suddenly I caught the flashing of a sword in someone’s hand. It sliced down, and blood was sent arcing in a spray through the air; as it fell the monsters – I could no longer bear to think of them as men – lifted their faces to welcome the shower. Still the statue whirled round and round, and still the hapless victims twisted and screamed. A second blade flashed, and then a third, until soon they were falling like sparks of fire, dyed red by die flames and by living blood.